


Black is the Color

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Editor!Remus, M/M, MWPP, Marauders, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8917123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Remus was never very good at dealing with tougher emotions, and Sirius isn't the best at helping. But he never said he couldn't try.





	

_“Black, black, black is the color of my true love’s hair,_  
_His lips are something rosy fair;_  
_The sweetest smile and the kindest hands,_  
_I love the ground whereon he stands._

 _I love my love, and well he knows;_  
_I love the grass whereon he goes._  
_If he no more on earth will be,_  
_’T'will surely be the end of me.”_

_\- old Appalachian folk melody_

—

A sudden, knifing breeze whips a slouch of fallen leaves to life on the curb, and the motor bike’s engine grumbles to a hush amid the mute and windy roar. Curls of the reddened autumn chaff skitter around Sirius’ boots as he steps from the bike, rolling it into the hollow alley he had pulled up to before lovingly toeing the kickstand down. He removes his helmet with a sigh on the latter end of exhilaration. The ride left him strung with quiet adrenaline—a wonder of Muggle engineering he far prefers to brooms that still gives him a thrill every time he revs the frankensteined heap of parts to life—and the crests of his shoulders itch now to get inside and bodily interrupt whatever incessant tome Remus has buried himself in tonight.

He kisses two fingers and touches them to one of the bike’s handlebars, ritualistic, and steps out of the alley, wrestling his keys out of his pocket in front of the walk-up’s front door. When they had first found the place, Sirius had muttered something about it looking just as tall and impassive-looking as Grimmauld Place used to, as well as he could remember it, but Remus had raised an eyebrow and quipped back with something matter-of-fact and tinged with wit. Something about how _This is just a ‘dirty’ Muggle walk-up,_ and _Not even Grimmauld could be warded heavily enough to fend off loud upstairs neighbors,_ which, to Sirius’ rapacious delight and Remus’ badly-feigned chagrin, they had in fact turned out to be themselves as they christened their sparse third floor flat three times that same afternoon. Remus had spent the following week apologizing with offerings of home-made bread to the floors below, buying their tenants’ shock down to mere sideways looks one warm bundle at a time, and Sirius finds himself smiling small and secretive as he recalls the reddened ears Remus sported each time he came back up from his peace offering—

_You don’t need to keep delivering care packages, they already know we’re big fucking queers. The woman on the ground floor picked up on it the day we came to consider the place._

_I know I don’t need to, but I don’t want them to think I’m rude. To think we’re rude, Sirius—_

_Again; we’re already The Big Fucking Queers._

_Is it so wrong then that I just want to change that to The Big Fucking Queers Who Can At Least Make Good Bread?_

_Ta, maybe graduate to pies and they’ll let us have a go on the stairs one morning._

_I’ll stand by bread, thanks._

—No, Sirius thinks idly, some things haven’t changed at all. He pushes the front door open through its sallow November creak and starts up the narrow stairwell through the dark. Remus had known even before their final year at Hogwarts arrived that he wanted quietude.

James and Sirius nursed boyish fantasies of Auror training, Peter threw himself into Herbology and tended to fresh dreams of keeping some sort of shop, but Remus continued to bury himself in books as if it would fend off the rampant kinetic potential of his three best friends. They dogged him with more and more questions as that spring loomed ever closer; _Will we have to start calling you Professor Moony in earnest soon? You know there isn’t a N.E.W.T.s subject on Pushkin, right? How will you muster the will to live without this bloody massive library at your disposal? What, are you just going to fuck off and disappear into The Fens?,_ the last one spat out by a furious James on his way from the dormitory, in a horrid mood last March, and twisting unexpectedly white-hot like a hex into Sirius’ core. Remus had said nothing, civil to a fault, but that night when Sirius snuck between his wolf-warm sheets with his favorite silencing charms and wended fervent kisses into Remus’ neck, he found tension there he had never even felt in his own depths. After they twined themselves together in the sated salt-glow of refraction, Sirius had drummed up his resolve and turned to a half-lidded Remus.

_…James is a twat._

_James is our best mate, but yes, at times, a twat._

_He said you were going to be a hermit in the fucking Fens. Nobody goes to The Fens unless they hate themselves._

_Ha. Well, maybe that would be perfect for yours truly then._

_Shut up. Live with me._

It had come out like an overburdened brook, tripping past his lips like a guilty prayer one doesn’t mean to actually profess lest their faith be seen too deeply, but as the weeks ebbed on beyond that night it felt more and more like the only destination that made any sense. Sirius abandoned his daydreams of becoming a wizarding hero for the burgeoning reality of living a largely magic-free life outside of London for some time with Remus—he found his way to their town’s mechanic garage his first afternoon out, took one look at the heaps of gorgeous Muggle machinery, and snapped up a job immediately. Sirius was immensely content; he was relieved he found it so shockingly easy to melt into this uncharted normalcy with the man he adored.

Loves.

The panorama of memories skates across the back of Sirius’ mind through the steep trek up to their flat, but it careens to a halt on that fucking four-letter word. Sirius stills his hand on the doorknob and unconsciously clenches his jaw; the concept of love, so warped and convoluted in him by his farce of a family, had plagued Sirius’ insides with steadily-growing intensity since he first asked Remus if they could “try maybe kissing once because I’m quite taken with the way your face is put together” one morning in the Shack after a particularly calm transformation—16 years old, bleary with exhaustion, Remus shaken and sore but blessedly free of deep wounds, Sirius had asked in a croaking voice and received wordless bliss from pliant lips that seemed limned by hazy happiness. They had existed in a furtive language from then on, stealing glances and ecstatic, hushed moments in countless alcoves. Friends too daft or just nice enough to pretend not to notice made no mention of it, and so the move to their haven in Basingstoke was only ever seen as two frugal lads facing the future as the best of friends. Their neighbors, of course, had their own suspicions now, but Remus was so bloody charming about the whole thing that they never garnered enough attention on the issue for it to really be a problem. Behind closed doors, etc, Sirius muses as he sweeps into the flat like a shadow.

But the two had never quite managed to breach the concept of love.

Sirius was, he fully admitted to himself, a spineless coward underneath his impeccable genes and bravado, and so he allowed the limbo of What They Are to drift unmoored between him and Remus because it was all he could do to keep from imploding. From the moment they moved in at the start of summer he felt love thrumming in his blood like mercury; it sang through his veins with a high, delicate ringing whenever Remus watered his fern by the kitchen window, or Remus licked the sugar cube he took in his tea before dropping it in, or Remus carded his fingers through Sirius’ hair at night, or Remus was Remus was Remus.

But he couldn’t say it. The dam that had burst when he proposed the living arrangements had been rebuilt and reinforced by nearly two years of keeping the two of them a secret, and so now when he truly needed it to breach of course it held faster than iron. Even at dire points when Sirius fully expects the struts to buckle and let his truths cascade from behind his ribs—whenever he knits his fingers into the short waves of Remus’ hair and tugs just so, or when he watches Remus’s face make the sacred transition from perfect, measured tension to gasping climax—his heart refuses to let down its guard. While Sirius outwardly blames the hack-job of emotional navigation his shambles of a mother imparted upon him, he knows deep down that this is harder than it would be with anyone else because it’s just Remus.

It is, he thinks to himself as he hangs his coat and helmet over their entryway hooks, sweeping a hand through his hair, a ridiculous problem to have in such close proximity with such a thoroughly perfect man. It should be easier than this.

“Remus?” Sirius calls, in a measured tone halfway between Speak and Call that they have both adopted after long enough of seeking one another through several tiny rooms, and he realizes halfway through the second syllable that the door to their balcony is open. The name finishes its escape from his mouth a bit strangely, volume dying too-quickly, and the smell of tobacco finally makes itself known to him alongside the crisp breeze he had only just left behind outside. The lights are off, but the canine tendencies that breathe in their marrow often makes both of them forget there are solutions beyond sharp vision in the dark and an impeccable sense of smell.

Sirius leaves the lights off. He steps through the entryway and into the kitchen, where he finds Remus leaning languidly on the sturdy railing and looking out over the sleepiness of their corner of town. A hand-rolled cigarette smolders like a whisper between his thumb and forefinger, and while his body projects Remus’ unique and far-too-fucking-alluring brand of calm, his moss-green eyes are sharp and full of something Sirius can’t quite place. As a whole, in a word, he is Perfect. In a few more words, he is The Only Thing That Has Ever Mattered. Sirius wants to blurt it all at once. He settles for swallowing his hummingbird heart and moving to lean beside this patron saint of everything worth chasing in life.

“Here, good night so far?” He asks gently, thumbing tenderly at Remus’ earlobe and placing a moth-light kiss to his temple. Remus smiles gently, a study of sensible greenery and hyacinths if it were a portrait, and offers the cigarette to Sirius. Taking it with his own smile in return—barbed holly clusters and violets, arranged in haphazard excitement—, Sirius draws deeply and joins Remus in looking out over the swaths of residential English sprawl. He exhales a slow plume of smoke as Remus shifts his lean to better make the tiny space fit two.

“I finished translating those new texts for McGonagall—there’s a bit on her theories of Transfiguration you ought to read yourself before I send it back—and started 'A Feast in Time of Plague' again.”

 _You’re a feast amid plague,_ Sirius thinks to himself, coloring slightly as he immediately tamps it down with another pull on the cigarette. Remus requests it back with silent, graceful fingers. “You?” He asks plainly. Sirius nods.

He pays attention without looking to the way Remus absorbs calmness: he hears the subtle shift of his oversized jumper sleeves, the almost inaudible hiss of an inhale through burning rolling paper; smells the sweetened twist of this measure of their shared loose tobacco, the hint of Remus’ own earthy musk that tends to fade to this exact sort of paleness at the low point of the lunar cycle. Sirius makes to look up into the sky, but Remus sighs with just enough tightness to pull Sirius’ eyes back to him.

“Nearly a new moon,” He says, too-blithe, as if he could hear Sirius’ intentions, and he sips deeply from a glass of Firewhiskey that Sirius hadn’t noticed on his way in. Remus offers the drink as well, and Sirius accepts the cup before catching Remus’ now-emptied hand in his own and pressing lingering, purposeful kisses into his knuckles. Remus quirks a smile, slowly tracing Sirius’ lips with his forefinger and returning to his vigil over the open balcony—Sirius’ mouth tingles faintly at the loss of touch.

He feels Remus’ distraction like an instinct and reassumes a lean beside him after taking a draught from the Firewhiskey. He stares at the moon, a jot of steely anger bolting through him as it had since he experienced Remus’ first transformation. For the first several months, it was from abject fear. Thereafter, it grew into a deeper root of anger that fed on the fact that Sirius had to watch Remus curb his brilliance once a month to be slave to the pearlescent bitch.

Tonight the moon is a fraction of herself, like a light through the lid of a jar pulled back just enough to peer into what might lie inside. Sirius feels the anger subside to a degree, fiercely thankful for the calm of the two “off” weeks each month; Remus always loses a significant share of his general anxiety when the moon falls on the far side of waning, and it’s in those several days that he usually laughs the most. Sirius always jumps at the chance to try and make Remus laugh, musical and raucous at the best of times, until he gasps for breath with a wide, sunshine smile.

“Where do you want to go while you’re on the trough of it?” Sirius asks, knowing that Remus prefers the mountains but thinking of ways to convince him to want a few days in Brighton this time around. Remus hesitates before shaking his head shortly and meditating on another drag on the cigarette. He motions for the Firewhiskey and Sirius passes it back, his gut tightening at the uncharacteristic refusal.

“I’ve just been thinking it’s sort of fucked up,” Remus says after a long sip, suddenly with an ounce more power behind his voice and an edge to the jade of his eyes that are avoiding looking right at Sirius—he settles on watching the road beyond them without seeing it. “The new moon, I mean. How it sort of, you know. Lulls me into a false sense of normalcy for a day.”

Sirius says nothing. Remus has the trappings now of expounding on something that Sirius has learned isn’t worth trying to interrupt until he’s Quite Finished, Sorry, You Know How I Get.

“I get to be around other people and—and do normal things, like stay out past moonrise because I won’t get headaches, or maybe even go for a swim because I don’t feel so shit about my scars when they’re not hurting like _fucking_ brands.” He exhausts the stub of the cigarette with a deep drag and kills the ash on the railing, placing it neatly into the ashtray on the counter beside him. Sirius notices that it’s dirtied with three other fresh dead ends, and the twist in his gut tightens; Remus doesn’t chain smoke unless he’s upset.

Unknowingly further wrenching Sirius’ insides, Remus swiftly rolls another cigarette— precise sprinkle of tobacco, exacting and dextrous fingers, expeditious tongue sealing the edge—and lights it with a strikingly forceful snap of his fingers. Sirius moves closer and lays a gentle handle to his lower back—Remus tightens briefly, immediately relaxes, leans lightly into the warmth of Sirius’ splayed fingers.

“Are you alright?” Sirius asks softly. Remus nods, detached, and Sirius patiently does not challenge the fact. He waits, quiet and concerned, as Remus smokes his new roll down halfway before continuing.

“I’m just…tired. I’m tired of using some dilapidated fucking cellar in the middle of nowhere to lock up and transform. I’m tired of having to fix new chains to the wall each month, I’m tired of having to hide, I’m exhausted, Sirius.” Remus sighs shakily and scrubs his half-done cigarette down into the ashtray. He draws his hands across his face, listless, and remains silent for a moment more; Sirius moves his hand up to Remus shoulder and squeezes it with affection.

“I’m terrified,” Remus says in a near whisper, “of all this apathy. I feel like I’m dying.”

Sirius feels a violent, invisible tug of dread wrench his guts from right behind his diaphragm. He turns swiftly to Remus, gathering him into a desperate embrace that is accidentally more intimate than any combination of shagging or love-making or idle touching they’ve ever shared—neither of them notices this. Sirius holds him like crumbling marble he’s determined to keep together, and Remus seems to let it envelop him after a moment of frozen surprise. They stand in suspended shock for some time, with the soft sounds of Carrying On Just Fine twinkling in from the world outside the balcony. Sirius still struggles to draw a deep enough breath.

“What happened, Remus? This isn’t like you,” He asks, inwardly startled by the break in his voice as he says it. _Haven’t felt this in a while,_ he thinks, _cheers, you fucking heap of lunar shit-rock, here’s the fear you like to see so much._

Remus turns his face into Sirius’ neck, dredging up memories of the first time they figured out how to lay down just right to fight their bodies together as the perfect tangle of limbs in a nest of sheets and down. Sirius feels those lovely eyes squeeze shut tight and the sloping, achingly-sweet shoulders tense; fuck, he is absolutely in love, he will never be able to feel this way about any other creature as long as he lives. He savors the feeling of closeness, of need, of love, love, _love—_

“My mum’s gone, Sirius.”

The tableaux shatters. His stomach drops and without even having to think about it, Sirius twines his arms even tighter around Remus to shield him from the inevitable force of defeat. He buries his right hand in the pale russet of Remus’ hair and squeezes his left arm about Remus’ waist as if he could draw their hearts so near that Sirius could absorb the bad parts and marry them to all his own fractals of pain. It doesn’t work. Remus begins to cry.

Remus Lupin never cries. Sirius can count on one hand the number of times he has seen him reduced to tears in their near-eight years of history; two, maybe three times if he counted a small breakdown over N.E.W.T.S. The first was when Remus told their ruddy little band of roommates about his affliction in second year, fountain-eyed and helpless and looking very small at the border of the Forbidden Forest when the other three had cornered him after a particularly lengthy monthly absence. Neither of them had thought for a moment on the fragility of a boy fearing his only tenuous friendships might shatter with the knowledge of his curse, and so embarrassment and many flurries of _Here, Remus, it’s alright, don’t cry, mate, your tears’ll freeze,_ shuttled between the boys like a hot coal neither wanted to hold.

But Sirius remembers the triptych of _I knew it, I bloody knew it,_ bred from nights poring over the restricted section of the library in a manic and secretive impulse to dig up the truth about his enchanting friend, racketing around inside him next to a stirring hum he would later uncover through the blinding thicket of adolescence as a deep, maddening adoration. It had ignited something in him that silently vowed to never again see Remus this upset as long as he drew breath.

The second time was the inevitable death of that promise partway through fourth year. As Sirius waited outside of Dumbledore’s office while Severus sat within receiving stern direction as to never let slip what he had seen at the Shrieking Shack that night on the grounds of swift consequence, Remus rounded the corner of the empty hallway towards him with such militant anger raging in his eyes that Sirius felt a unique fear seize in his chest that hadn’t thrummed to any sort of life since he was last beaten mauve by his father’s serpent-crested cane.

 _I trusted you,_ Remus hissed, his glare flashing with feral pain and shining slick with tears that escaped their banks as he caught the lapels of Sirius’ robes in a shaking fist. _You promised me nobody would ever know, and now_ he _knows? Of all the people in this fucking castle? I thought you were better than this, Sirius Black._

Remus’ hoarse whisper was like steam racing from a kettle that had been screaming for far too long and felt just as scalding. Sirius’ throat caught at hearing Remus curse and use his surname—he couldn’t find the wherewithal to form words. He settled instead for the agony of holding eye contact with Remus, tears burning tracks of hot salt down those angular cheeks and tripping over the month-old scar that lashed his face diagonally from temple to top lip. Sirius had desperately wanted his panicked and pained stare to communicate in lieu of his voice, the boundless apologies that he knew could never heal this breach but could perhaps hold a patch over it until it healed itself—Sirius had always been good with words, he knew this—but Remus only deepened his glare. Sirius’ nerves shocked with defeat, and he felt a foreign itch under his skin to fall to his back and tuck proverbial tail in submission.

 _You had better pray,_ Remus grated out, low and dangerous and so many kinds of broken, _that Dumbledore can set this right. Or I’ll have to leave and—I’ll never have a future, Sirius, do you understand what you’ve done to me?_ His voice had broken then as a fresh wave of tears twisted his face into anguish, breaking his locked eyes from Sirius in disappointment. Sirius had felt guilt prickling at the backs of his own eyeballs, and Remus let go of the robes crushed in his fist as he moved to leave.

 _How dare you take away the one good thing in my life,_ he had wept, stalking back down the hall and disappearing for three days. For three days Sirius ran those words through his brain in a constant feedback loop of regret. Of course Remus eventually returned; of course he had stayed. Of course they mended their friendship back from square one with careful doses of bawdy jokes and rare moments of gravitas, Sirius finally learning from his last mistake and decoding all the ways Remus’ mind worked. They slowly transmuted their togetherness into something delicate and golden until Sirius crested that first true summit and asked him for a kiss on a pale April morning with only the Shack’s warped floorboards to protest the shifting of their bandy legs.

Now he presses his lips to Remus’ hair, closing his eyes tight against the pitch of emotion that tosses his insides like a guttering wave. Seeing Remus trapped in the purgatory of unknowing is a snarling overdose of pain because Remus is supposed to know everything. More painful than watching his mother obliterate his branch of the family tree; almost as painful as owling Regulus unceasingly for days with no reply, demanding _Tell me it’s a lie, tell you aren’t one of them, Reg, tell me you’re still my brother,_ until the poor little creature tasked with winnowing back and forth had squawked and pecked at his fingers out of ruffled exhaustion, and Sirius bled on the last letter he had thought to scrawl— _at least tell me you’re still alive_ —and he knew the answer in his bones. Watching Remus fall apart is a different sort of lance through his heart, but Sirius knows it’s the sort of pain grown from the same origins.

“When?” Sirius asks into the hair whispering at his face.

“Afternoon,” Remus says through ripping tears, “da Flooed over, told me she took a turn for the worse that no one saw coming and didn’t make it through the night.” He shudders with a heaving breath and wraps his own arms around Sirius’ midsection to hold fast—Sirius redoubles his own embrace. “Neither of us…fucking _did_ anything about it either, no crying, all matter-of-fact and uncomfortable hugs and—and when he left I finished the rest of the translations faster than I’d ever worked before, good work, and then I sat and I didn’t cry, I smoked and I didn’t cry, I poured too many drinks and I didn’t bloody cry, and I just—now you’re home, and—and I—Merlin, Sirius, I don’t want this life I've worked so hard on to fall apart!”

Remus is racked with sorrow and Sirius feels his own tears spill over. He is used to their sticky crawl, the way they make the skin in their wake feel plasticine, for his greatest difference from Remus is that his primary response to any emotional overload has always been to cry. Sirius is sweepingly grateful for the unsaid understanding that now is most certainly a time for crying, and so he makes no move to mask it with measured breathing or calculated angles of body language—he merely lets himself be the one that keeps Remus from sliding to the floor, and as he cries alongside he finds it suits him just fine for the moment.

They stand for a long while, faces grown clammy and chapped after so many tears like arctic explorers, cradling one another in the current of existence as Remus’ bawling progresses its way out of him into soft sobs and finally shuddering breathing that tells of some kind of arrival at acceptance. It quietly amazes Sirius, as somebody so used to crying his way through harder situations, that people like Remus—who would rather walk through fire than shed a tear—can navigate the act so well.

Sirius lifts his face from its protective press into the side of Remus’ head, having held him as close as one might guard their heart from the outside without a ribcage to do it for them, and loosens their embrace by a fraction. Remus sighs heavily, with a withering tremor, and looks at Sirius searchingly. His beautiful woodland-deep eyes are ringed thick with redness, his lightly-freckled nose raw and dripping slightly, his recurve-bow lips still trembling with the aftershocks of misery. Sirius wants to kiss him until the world ends.

The corner of Remus’ mouth hiccups up into an instinctive smirk, mirthless on the prow of a mind that Sirius knows is brimming full with memories of others who have died or abandoned him all the same, when the underbelly of this brewing war started showing itself and licking like fire at the foresails of their adulthood—six Ravenclaw researchers from their year; two of Remus’ fellow prefects; a professor of Divination who had been like a grandfather to him; a cousin and her husband as an initial example to the wizarding world at large. Sirius hears a dizzying din of white noise threaten in the back of his mind when he tries to think of all that loss at once. He decides to put it away for later.

Remus reaches out quietly and takes Sirius’ hand in his, moving to kiss each pale knuckle just as Sirius had his earlier. But as he leans to press his lips to the blunt curve of Sirius’ thumb, Sirius moves his hand and catches Remus in a long, slow, statuary kiss—they have recently begun to go together this way like marble instead of their initial newness as sandstone. Then Sirius feels Remus start to surrender into another gentle sob and they separate, holding tight to one another as before: ardent and pained but so absolutely together that they barely feel the chill as November ticks into December with the fall of midnight and the moon rounds ever closer to a waxing portent.

—

Sirius wakes with blurry recognition that his neck aches from sleeping on it badly, but with a chilled stiffness that he quickly realizes has permeated the room. _Shit._ They forgot to shut the balcony doors. He turns to his side, careful not to stir Remus with a practiced lightness that he had always been surprisingly good at, but he finds the other side of the mattress empty despite its relative warmth. Sirius slides from the covers, hissing to himself with the cold of the floor on his feet, and shivers into a heavy dressing gown.

He pads into the living room, unsurprised but plucked with a twinge of worry to see Remus awake and smoking, brooding over the Muggle newspaper and clearly not absorbing a word of it. It seems he has felt the cold as well, for he’s layered his jumpers and shut the balcony doors. His jaw is clenched and his eyes rimed with a lack of sleep. He has clearly been crying again.

“Any word from family?” Sirius asks carefully, not yet taking the chair beside him. Remus nods, and the page of paper in his left hand crackles in protest as he unconsciously clenches it.

“My uncle called,” he says, anger-bright and fitful with emotion. “’S son’s a parson, you know. Took care of speedy arrangements. They’ve got a time set for the funeral.”

The mention of Remus’ uncle Rhys—on Remus’ maternal side, a sturdy Welsh Muggle with a callow dislike of Lyall Lupin for reasons not much more advanced than “Hope could do better than some Irish drip”—always makes Sirius bristle. Remus’ mother is…was (his stomach twists at the mental correction) a saint of a woman, accepting a magical son with a dangerous, incurable curse to boot like a gift from Merlin himself. Though Sirius had only met her twice, both time made him wistful for an imaginary childhood in which he had parents who smiled like Remus’.

Sirius sits and takes Remus’ hand. “We’ll take a few days around it as well, go be with your da—“

“Two weeks. They’re holding the ceremony in two weeks.”

Sirius blinks. “Right, more time to plan—“

“They’re going to put my mum to rest on a fucking full moon, Sirius!” Remus roars, punctuating it by stabbing his cigarette out on the center of the newspaper— _A Year Without Keith Moon,_ crows the singed headline—and shoving the table. He goes stone-quiet for a tick when his resolve stammers and a new bloom of tears wells in his eyes. Before Sirius can react, Remus clatters up out of his chair and back into the living room, muttering something about being “so bloody sick of crying” as his voice cracks like an old oak.

 _This_ is the response to trauma that Sirius is used to seeing from Remus, wolfish flares of anger that recede as quickly as they come but have been known to nearly level a room with their magnitude. Over time he has become an expert at navigating these storms, knowing always whether to keep quiet or intervene. While Remus is usually good at letting reason govern, though, this is a unique familial desperation of loss that Sirius only knows from letting himself feel it fleetingly for his brother.

He waits a moment, rights the kitchen table, and then moves softly into the living room after Remus. Sirius finds him as a twined mass of tension perched on the edge of their single sofa, staring at the fireplace as if the answer to sullen existence is encoded somewhere in the floral burns of ash across its insides. Remus wipes fiercely at his eyes, sniffing deeply and no doubt Bottling It Up—which Sirius can’t quite protest for his guilt of the same crime many more times over—before turning to Sirius.

“He called me a cunt,” he says with stark candor, “said that if I can’t make it to the funeral than I’m just ‘an ungrateful little cunt, your mother gave you everything and now you can’t even do this much.’ I haven’t wanted to hex somebody so badly in ages.”

Remus has an uncanny talent for mimicking voices, and the boorish Welsh accent that Remus stretches overtop of his words would have made Sirius laugh at any other time. Now though, it falls on his ears like the tang of blood and worries him just as much.

“Why aren’t they willing to change it by even just a day?” He curls onto the arm of the couch like some great crow, keeping a respectable distance but watching the other man carefully for any further signs of shattering. They do this dance well—a foxtrot of touches just-so and right-there parried occasionally and neatly with not-now or someone-is-watching. Sirius doesn’t like dancing, but he knows Remus does. It’s harder when he’s this upset because Sirius has so little frame of reference for it.

“I don’t know, Padfoot, my uncle is a tosser,” exiting his lungs in a defeated mumble. Remus rarely uses their old nicknames these days, and hearing the shape of his own in that patchwork brogue again, nearly frozen in time with the same timbre and rhythm, sets the pit of Sirius’ stomach pleasantly a-smolder despite the circumstances. Remus gathers one of the overstuffed and faded thrift-grade pillows from the sofa and into his arms with a light sigh, staring listlessly back at the hearth.

“I know she wouldn’t be upset if I weren’t able to be there,” he says, his chin hooked over the pillow. “She would have understood, of all people. But I should get to be there for my da. He’ll shut down. You know how it goes.”

Sirius recalls the February of fifth year, Remus returning late one Sunday from a weekend taken home for his grandmother’s funeral. He had pilfered a deep flask of Dragon Barrel from one of the Hufflepuff prefects and brandished it to Remus’ overt delight when he stepped through the portrait hole looking uncharacteristically drained.

_Funerals are rubbish. I’m glad you’re back, Moony._

_Rubbish and weird. It was…rough. I saw my da cry; Lupin men never cry._

The were huddled on the rug in the common room, both halfway to inebriated as Remus wended his fingers through Sirius’ hair like an afterthought that made Sirius’ nerves mutter eagerly as tiny starbursts. _Take it from the expert on coping badly,_ he drawled, closing his eyes and stretching his neck surreptitiously to guide Remus’ hand to a particularly sensitive arc of his scalp, _crying helps. You should try it sometime._

 _Not my cup of tea,_ Remus had said, the discomfort in his voice clear and reedy and making Sirius instantly regret his jab.

 _Didn’t mean it like an insult,_ he said quickly, _just that…there’s something to be said for being a sap sometimes._

Remus had searched his gaze mutely for several seconds, the fire crackling like a dead record in front of them. Finally he shrugged; _Maybe someday I’ll think you’re not as much of a wanker and be a sap. All over your shoulder, fragile like a shepherd girl, eh?_ He grinned as he ribbed Sirius, laughing when they toppled into a pile of headlocks and good-natured insults.

Sirius wishes they could diffuse the bullshit piling up on Remus with an old-fashioned row. But the wound is far too raw, and he also knows it doesn’t work like that anymore; their knees and hands and even mouths have careful destinations these days, and he doesn’t dare disturb the riddle of equilibrium they’ve built since they moved in together.

“Well…” Sirius thinks aloud, hesitating briefly, “what if I went up for the ceremony, stayed with your da for the day, helped him a bit with the house, and then you come by next morning after you’re patched?”

Remus stays quiet, and Sirius flounders inwardly. “Wouldn’t have to see your uncle, or any other undesirables,” he mutters.

A span of silence stretches between them, augmented by the soft and hollow “chuck”ing of the hulking grandfather clock that James transfigured out of the astronomy classroom at the close of seventh year and foisted onto Remus as their housewarming gift. He had been so perfectly eager about the meaning behind it, charmed to always tell the phase of the moon and its relation to the rest of the celestial charts, with a Canis Major that barks excitedly whenever Sirius uses their Floo.

“Do you really want to do that?” Remus finally asks, peering at him sideways.

“Absolutely! I’d have been going with you anyways, this is just a—a bit of a rhythm tweak. Can’t let you slog through this on your own, yeah?” Sirius does his best to ignore the icy pressure in his lungs when a matter-of-fact _Because I’m in love with every blessed facet of You_ is caught violently in his throat. He nearly has to suppress a cough; when the fuck did his inner voice get so flowery?

Remus lets go of the pillow snaked within his arms, setting it beside him and gesturing in a small way for Sirius to fill the space instead. Sirius eases into their familiar embrace, lying sideways across the sofa and Remus’ legs, wrapping his own arms around Remus’ secretly-scarred and flat-muscled midsection, with Remus’ fingers playing through the inky length of his hair like a harpist— _Remus Remus Remus_ mercy, he could remain here for years and never age a day. He closes his eyes, inhaling lightly, and wills the depths of his memory to sear this tenuous peace into their most carefully-guarded channels.

“I’ll start brewing Wolfsbane into my tea next week to make it a bit easier to bounce back, I think,” Remus says to himself, and just like that Sirius feels Their Normal snap back into place like the abrupt ignition of his motorbike. Achingly, he wishes Remus could share more of his emotions like his cigarettes; reluctantly, he wishes he was courageous enough to ask for them.

—

The next week and a half passes in a strange tempo, a give and take of anticipatory stress that Sirius knows is wearing on both men separately but never at the same angle and rarely at the same time. When they trade breath and sweat-slick skin each day between their schedules of work or rest, Sirius trying hard at first to lead with tenderness or adoring lightheartedness, Remus errs far more on the end of perfunctory release—eyes closed, grip insistent, whispering mindless nothings of urgency that he knows will bring Sirius along with him before coming with a strangled cry that, more often than not, carries blue notes of apprehension within. Sirius’ own endings are never far behind—how can he ever hope to hold back for long when Remus is a tempestuous sum of teeth on his earlobe, sinew beneath his palm, all heat and welcome oblivion for that shattered suspension of a second when he forgets to be preoccupied—but those chromaticisms still hurt like pinpricks. More than once Remus has left the bed, or the couch or the hastily-cleared kitchen counter, with only a small and fervent kiss to whichever plane of Sirius’ skin is nearest to his mouth to be alone and smoke, often with a heavy Russian title propped on his knees. Sirius feels disdain taking root in his chest for those dour Romantic bastards, all brocade and tundra and the wells from which he’s almost positive Remus has learned to draw his reluctance to letting himself fall in love. He knows it’s juvenile that a large part of him wants Remus to put it out in the open first, but then again he’s always been one for snobbish and quiet rebellion. He hates it.

Sirius tries his hardest to bite his tongue and is largely successful. After all, it’s his own sorry cosmic misfortune that the death of the woman Remus revered above all else coincides with the exact beginning of his most infernal grappling with his inability to Out And Say It, Black yet. He only falters in his tortured silence once, two nights before the funeral, catching Remus’ wrist gently after he tries to leave a heated kiss on the sofa for the solitude of their spare room; Sirius pins his stare hungrily, pleading silent into that sharpening green as if his own were the ocean attempting to drown the depths of the forest.

“What,” Remus murmurs, not a question at all and not entirely cruel, just a degree of what feels like smugness but has lately tasted of fear on his lips.

“You—you can open up to me,” Sirius stammers, his hackles raising at his own dumbfounding even after rehearsing this scenario in the back of his mind anywhere from elbow-deep in a laughably tiny 1958 Astra to the damp quietude of the newly-lonesome baths he’s taken afterwards. Remus’ brows furrows at their center, almost imperceptibly.

“I’ve known that for ages,” a confusing response; a knowing response, one that rattles Sirius’ eardrums with the unsaid invitation to step into this agonizing fencing match for the umpteenth time.

“The night I came home after your da was here,” Sirius soldiers on even through the silver-bright flash that passes through Remus’ eyes, “that’s the sort of thing I mean. I know—I understand how hard this is for you. But I also don’t like seeing you all… _compressed._ ”

“My mum is dead, Sirius. Am I not allowed to grieve without sobbing all over your shoulders, or is that inconvenient for you?”, feather-light, but with a leaden undertone to its delivery that smacks of ire. Remus has always known his words can wound. Perhaps this time it’s on purpose.

“Fuck, Moony, I’m only saying it hurts to see you this way.” He props himself on his elbow, leaning over Remus in a subconscious assertion of hound-wrought dominance. “I don’t need you to be some weepy damsel, can you just talk to me? Please? Without hiding behind fucking 'War and Peace'?”

Sirius half expects him to shove off and stock to a different corner of the flat, but he has underestimated the sheer proximity of the full moon and that Remus’ blood is fairly boiling with anticipation.

“Alright then,” Remus snarls, “you haven’t asked me even once since she died how I’m truly faring but you want to talk? Here: I’ve been fucking livid at the entire bloody universe for twelve days straight. Wolfsbane taste like shit, my joints are aching like I’m seventy fucking years old, I can’t go outside because the sunlight hurts my eyes so badly it makes me vomit, I can hardly eat some days for this stupid combination of—of sadness, and fear, and madness tossing around in my fucking stomach, Sirius, _Christ!_ I can barely even look at you when we shag because there’s a little part of this fucking creature in me that’s constantly telling me you’re going to leave too, and sometimes it sounds pretty damn convincing! And I can’t handle that all at once, do you understand _that?_ ”

Remus’ face has flushed, his breath is rapid, and Sirius feels like the room is spinning; leave it to his fatal flaw of avoiding conflict like the plague to make Remus fear for their fortitude. “I’m so sorry,” he breathes, still angled above Remus but now bereft of his predatory intimidation. “I had no idea it was so bad.” _Of course it’s So Bad,_ he shouts at himself inwardly, _it’s a fucking curse, not a day trip._

“You barely ever ask how it all goes if I’m not saying it directly, and you’ve never needed to know the details before. But here we are.” Remus’ voice trembles slightly with the residuals of his amplified anger, turning his head to the side in an almost petulant resistance to meet Sirius’ eyes any longer. Sirius feels his heart surge, the words finally tumbling to the forefront of his mouth, crowding his tongue and curling into gunpowder on its tip as he turns Remus’ chin gently to face him again, weakened and broken and yes, just as confused, it’s etched into his eyes like veins of copper—

“Remus, I—“

“You don’t have to ask right now just because you feel obligated,” Remus interrupts with a murmur, “just remember in the future, yeah?”

Sirius’ thought process skips a rung, and just as soon as the confession was ready it dissipates again. He leaves his hand on Remus’ cheek in mute defeat and just nods. Remus sighs. “I feel like death warmed over…I should open up more, I know, but you should also know to ask more often. There, we’re even. Things to work on both, look how domestic we are…I’m sorry for raising my voice.”

Sirius is struck by the absurdity of the situation and laughs weakly without humor, bundling Remus into his arms with a sudden bolt of possession. “Merlin’s beard, Remus, don’t apologize, it’s not your fault I’m a fucking cowardly twat.” He buries his face in Remus’ neck and kisses him there languidly. Remus makes an airy sound in response, halfway between the start of the last word he’s always loathe to go without and a low groan. Sirius turns to his face and moves the next kiss to his mouth, poured thick with apology and promise, and Remus returns it with hushed hunger.

“Come to bed,” he whispers when they separate, clearly inundated with the need to quell his slow rise of keening lunar impulse, and so Sirius gathers him up into the unkempt room they share as if it has always been theirs, draws out their pleasure with all the slow deliberation he has missed so dearly these days, and does his best to make Remus understand the words he had almost brought to life earlier by painting them into his skin with abstracted whorls of touch and breath instead.

—

Two mornings later, Remus sports dark circles under his eyes and is packing a worn travel satchel on the kitchen table. Splints, bandages, tiny travel vials of potions and poultices for cuts his accelerated healing can’t take care of on its own; Sirius’ skin crawls at the neat little suture kit tucked amidst it all as well. Remus catches him staring and smiles wryly.

“Honestly, I could give the Muggle surgeons the what-for at this rate. I’ve gotten quite good at making do without Pomfrey,” he says, but the lightness in his voice doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s scared. Sirius is terrified. He always is. He almost swallows it, but remembers that they’re using words now instead of brooding.

“Have I ever told you how much I worry about you?” He winces the moment it leaves his mouth; it sounded clunky, awkward, the emphasis was all wrong. He’s losing his easy way with words, and he knows exactly the combination of four blasted letters that’s plugging it all up.

“No?” Remus has stopped cataloguing the contents of his bag and narrows his eyes at him slightly. Sirius exhales heavily and shrugs.

“Well, I do. Worry. Not in the ‘don’t play in the sandbox, dearie, too dangerous’ way, but the ‘I don’t know how to help you’ way.” He pauses, shrugs again. _Fucking hell, Black, get it together._ “Because I do want to. Help. I miss running with you.”

“I miss it too,” Remus hums after a moment, still watching him. “Well, ordinarily I would say come with and run tonight instead of me playing prisoner, but you have other Lupin-related duties.”

Sirius glances back to the bedroom, a solemn black suit Remus is lending him hanging on the door. Initially he had hated its close-fitting stiffness, protesting the litany of differences between it and dress robes, but Remus had assured him with more ardor dancing in his eyes than Sirius had seen in a long while that he looked Really Quite Dashing, and Sirius diligently held back a dirty quip about them being the same size only to have Remus steal it right out from under him. The laughter that followed almost brought Sirius to ecstatic tears to hear it after so long.

As painful as it was to have been wrung through the past fourteen days, Sirius has finally begun to feel the galvanizing side of trauma in the space behind his heart whenever he looks at Remus. They didn’t leave bed until well past mid-afternoon yesterday, reveling over and over in exploring one another’s bodies in the new theatre of communication—stopping only for bits of rest or food and Remus’ daily owl to Lyall—, and despite the looming inevitability of sorrow today and tomorrow, Sirius is at least partially relieved.

“My da’s expecting you via Floo to the house in Hereford around tea, and then you two will do the same from there into Cardiff to get to the churchyard. He’ll know the route there.” Remus has returned to double-checking his pack, neatening it as if the order of everything inside matters and might make his transformation less obscene. He sips distractedly from a cup of breakfast black that’s gone cold and winces distantly at its oversteeped bitterness, finishing it anyways. “Then I’ll patch up in the morning, come to the house and see da, and the two of us will kip back to Cardiff and pay some respects. Ta?”

Sirius hears amplification in the harmony of Remus’ voice leaning heavily on his father’s heritage, the accent always a shifting tete-a-tete between his mother’s caramel-sweet Welsh English and the crisp kelly canter of Ireland. It’s as if he’s subconsciously laying the remaining parts of his mother to rest, and the thought echoes in Sirius with morosity.

“I think that sounds well enough,” Sirius slips past Remus, takes the newly-emptied teacup to the sink and rinses it briefly, “should I bring something with me today? Flowers? Booze?”

“No flowers for him, he’s got the opposite of a green thumb. I made bread last night to send with you, there on the counter, but otherwise he only drinks occasionally and specifically. That Spanish brandy from Mallorca, apparently brewed by Veela? It’s a damn good drink. Take him up on it when he offers.” Remus slings the satchel over his shoulder and Sirius half wants to tear it back off and bury them both in the topography of their bed again. He wishes, for the hundredth time, that he could swallow the consequences of Remus’ transformation and take the burden off of those freckled shoulders, but he knows Remus would fire off some perfectly-measured witticism about the circumstances of being a Dark Creature, and he swears to himself this is the last thought he’ll consciously keep from Remus.

“I have to get going,” Remus says softly, clearly recognizing the tumult rattling through Sirius’ insides. Of course—the trip each month is long: go by bus to a surreptitious little wizarding pub nearly two hours out to Floo over to a warehouse in New Forest, Apparate twelve kilometers north, and walk the remaining hour’s slog through the outskirts of a snarled and exceedingly shadowy wood until the barely-visible and thickly warded hatch to Remus’ cellar appears to the trained eye. Sirius had almost missed it the first time he went along for the trial run of the place, Remus wanting the extra reassurance of Sirius on the other end to make sure it held. It had worked, almost unbelievably well to Sirius’ secret and selfish disappointment. Thus ended the adrenal marathons of crashing through anonymous, post-Hogwarts forests in the north in canine chaos, replaced by Remus’ martyrly sequestering in a hard stone cell eight feet below the loam. The morbid irony of it this month is not lost on either of them.

“Be careful, Remus,” Sirius manages to murmur out as he draws him into nervous arms. A knot squeezes in his throat and he tries to swallow it away thickly, feeling Remus’ heart hammering in lunar insistence at his ribs. It’s hard every month, but this time it hurts like a badly-set bone, prickling into Sirius’ flesh and thoughts in dull, throbbing pulses. He feels that if he doesn’t say what he needs to now, he might never get around to it—

But he’s certain Lady Fate has a grudge against him now because Remus pulls back, kisses him fully— _sweet summer grasses and air made of honeysuckle scent_ —and moves to the door. “I’ll be there tomorrow as early as possible, tell da to…focus on the logic of it.” He hesitates for a moment longer. “Please, honestly, don’t worry about me Padfoot, it dulls those lovely eyes of yours. I—I’ll see you in the morning, I promise,” and he’s gone like a prayer when the door latches behind him. The paralysis in Sirius’ windpipe clears too late, he whimpers a pathetic “I love you” to the empty flat, and he despises himself in the unique fashion only a Black can muster.

—

Three hours have dragged by. Sirius has skimmed through the paper twice, owled James with an update of the last several days—clumsily omitting this week’s forays with Remus and having to scrap the first two drafts that are filled with too much talking in circles and waffling around the facts—, listened to a short battery of radio dramas, and started several of Remus’ crosswords. He finally reaches the window of time he slated earlier to dress before leaving, so he dons the solemn-looking suit and surveys himself in the mirror. He has opted to catch his hair back in a tidy braid, which has woken up the aristocratic architecture of his face so oft hidden by tumbles of the silken jet-black. He is a staggeringly handsome man when he bothers, and he knows this, but he wishes it were under better circumstances.

He thinks longingly on how it was at James and Lily’s wedding early last summer; a proper wizarding ceremony, no holds barred in cost or catering and, for most of them, the first truly formal occasion outside of a Christmas feast. They had all looked like royalty in robes and gowns from all corners of family lineage. He and Remus especially, artfully smiling through the intrigued whispers that fluttered through the reception when they entered together—Sirius had finally convinced Remus to borrow his best dress robes that didn’t look too _Tujours Pur_ , deep green paired with golds and purples instead of silver, mostly out of selfishness to drink in the sight of Remus with his hair tamed back and eyes sparkling like emeralds above the brocade of a high, stately collar. Four different women had asked him to dance, and ever the gentleman he obliged to all. Sirius staved off the curdle of jealously with wine, watching from the edges of the room at his place beside a love-drunk James who kept commenting on how regal Remus was and _No wonder he’s pulling left and right,_ and _Get up and dance yourself, you bloody mutt, there are beautiful people everywhere, I should know, I invited them,_ while Sirius stewed bluntly in the back of his mind on his and Remus’ stubborn and ridiculous inability to dance together in public. Once they had stumbled home afterwards well beyond sober, Sirius relished the removal of such immaculate robes—he made sure to tear some seams through his fervor in perverse spite to the dead memories of his family, and he took the deepest and most shattering pleasure in flinging them, debauched, across the living room rug with Remus taken, begging confirmations in hoarse whispers, right atop them. Sirius wants to think he’s getting better about curbing his vindictiveness. He isn’t ever sure how to test it.

He returns to the front room to take up his greatcoat and scarf, shoulders the change of clothes he’s brought with him in a small rucksack along with Remus’ bundled bread, and steps into the hearth—checks the clock by the door as Canis Major begins to whine excitedly, yes, he’s right on time for tea. “Lupin household, Hereford,” he announces clearly and closes his eyes, dashing his handful of powder and twisting up and out through dimensional space with the faint sound of eager barking trickling away to the dull roar of travel, until he feels himself deposited solidly in Lyall Lupin’s sitting room. He smells the earl grey before he sees anything.

“Sirius Black!” comes the good-natured voice from the kitchen, a middle-aged caricature of Remus’ own with all the same dips and turns in its music but without the youthful glow sewn into its spaces. He appears through the archway into the sitting room, smiling a small Lupin smile but with a heartrending measure of sadness floating behind its purpose. He is wearing his own style of formalwear, studious and professional even in mourning, with a well-tailored Muggle jacket and freshly-pressed trousers above shoes that shine darkly; Remus learned his reverent care for clothing from his father.

“Mr. Lupin; I’m so sorry to hear. I wish it were different,” Sirius says as he steps out of the fireplace, and they share a man-to-man embrace of resilience with strong grip and tensed shoulders that promises silently to bear an unfortunate burden together. This is only the fifth time Sirius has met Remus’ father, but he feels deep ripples of responsibility to be trusted with helping him in need. It lasts briefly but with warmth, Lyall grateful for the motion while composing himself and Sirius clapping his back with soft reassurance, before they step apart.

“We’ve got tea on,” Lyall says with fresh clarity, and Sirius nods with a half-smile.

“Tea indeed, lead the way.”

The house is small, a bastion of homeyness in the seasonal bluster of the western midlands. Sirius visited once past when he was 14, a short weekend stay over Easter—the Black brood never sniffed at Muggle holidays, let alone religious rites that stank of them, so Sirius was blessedly free to escape into hitching those brief minor vacations onto the families of his dearest friends instead—and it was bliss. Hope hadn’t yet been so sick and she emanated happiness like August mornings, high and musical, at the way Sirius and Remus bantered; Lyall had told old stories that left them all roaring, and Sirius was able to see Remus truly out of his shell for the first time. They had been boys then, gangly and naïve and full of potential that passed itself off as camaraderie and pride at the brilliance of one another, in wizardry and stark existence both. Moving through this hollow-feeling residence now, bereft for some time of the woman who made it a home but now truly empty of her, Sirius feels Too-Grown as he has to stoop slightly through the archway into the soft yellow of the kitchen. A hazy mid-afternoon sun slips through the gauzed lace curtains in the windows like a church, making it all like the inside of a safe little eggshell.

“Remus made bread,” Sirius announces, drawing the loaf from its tea towel covering that had, he sees with echoing inward adoration, been charmed to keep it warm. Steam rises from its crust and twines with the fingers of vapor winnowing in the shafts of sunlight above the teacups that Lyall sets down on the small kitchen table. The older man smiles fondly and stirs two sugars into his cup with a wandless twist of his finger.

“His mother’s recipe; the sense of timing in that boy is sharp as ever.” Lyall continues to enchant his tea into a tiny whirlpool, halfway lost in thought, and Sirius squeezes the lemon wedge on his saucer into his own.

“He also wanted to make sure I told you to, ah, focus on the logic of it all,” he says softly, not meeting Lyall’s eyes as he sips from his teacup—the brew is impeccable. The older man is silent for a moment, tucks into his own tea, and nods slowly.

“Yes, Remus, you are ever your father’s son,” he mutters, but not without a vein of tenderness. Sirius smiles sadly.

“Has it been…alright, at least?”

Lyall sighs, but nods with assurance. “She was in lots of pain before she went. She never quite let us see it, least of all Remus, but she was absolutely hurting.” The tea looks like an antidote as he drinks steadily, saddened but only in a careful and wistful way—there has only ever been vengeance in Lyall Lupin’s blood once in his life, where it burned itself in to his veins like a perpetual scrawl of Greyback’s name and left no room for anger at anything else. “Hope handled it so well, so there really wasn’t anything left to do but make her happy. The first week was…difficult; I haven’t had to make my own way since before we were married. But time doesn’t stop, so I’ve taken to tidying up and continuing work like she would have wanted. It’s all about what she would have wanted these days, I’ve found. It fits me well enough. I still have Remus to fill some of those spaces, and that’s a blessed relief in the face of it.”

Sirius’ glance flickers to Lyall’s fingers on his teacup, steady and weathered but subtly tensed with an inner tangle of grief and love and relief and confusion that Sirius knows like his own thumbprint. “You’re extremely strong, Mr. Lupin,” he murmurs. “After the ceremony, I would love to help with the…cataloguing, I guess we can call it?”

Lyall surprises him slightly by chuckling, but Sirius find that such a sound of acceptance amid all this silent stasis is cleansing. “That’s a word for it,” he says, readjusting his glasses, “that would be lovely, thanks. There’s not a terrible amount to be done, Remus and I did most of the initial neatening when we knew she wouldn’t be able to come home again a couple months ago, but there are certainly the last few bits of her closet that I haven't touched. That last… _layer_ of things that belonged to her, I suppose, is the last bit of bulwark for me. I would appreciate that, Sirius.”

The depth of gratitude they both know will go unspoken in the Lupin tendency of catastrophic politesse glitters in Lyall’s eyes, so Sirius tucks it deep into his heart where for years he has been steadily packing the wounds from his severed family with things that make him feel loved. He remembers the week Remus had told him he was helping reorganize his parents’ home, coming and going through their Floo even more than when they moved in themselves, usually towing out empty boxes and returning with a tiny heirloom for their mantle or a pile of books with which to feed the mountain of stacks making their shelves buckle.

 _Merlin, the books._ While Remus got the taste for Tolstoy and his comrades from his father, the gentle love for what Sirius quickly learned was Symbolist poetry came from Hope. Nearly every evening for the first half of September, Sirius would come home to find Remus in various states of academic wonder with his editing jobs forgotten on the table and poring instead over newly-acquired volumes of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud—Muggles Sirius came to love well for the way they made Remus recite snippets of their most glorious passages under his breath to commit them to memory. Many nights it would be while they were reading in bed, and Sirius often cut the studies short by leaning over to taste how the words felt on his own tongue, and along his jaw, and breathed into his ear. Sirius knows now the initial fever for devouring the poems was Remus’ way of beginning a personal memorial to his mother, a thesis of good habits and eclectic interests that made her exceedingly proud. He must have known this was coming in the back of his mind since then. Sirius bites down the belated tang of sympathy that springs up on the edges of his tongue and drinks his tea down halfway, smiling in return at Lyall.

They talk genially of happier things: the Basingstoke flat, how Sirius has taken to adopting life in a largely Muggle-populated town, Lyall’s latest research on boggarts and how their migration patterns have impacted real estate in older parts of Britain—Sirius wonders idly at one point whether the warm glow of comfort that wells in him when mentions of Remus wind into their conversation is visible from outside of its home in his core. He finds he doesn’t care if it does. He promises himself that he’ll tell Remus what this feels like next time they have a moment alone.

Before it seems that too long has passed, Lyall looks at his watch and stands steadily. “We had best be off then,” he announces, “it’s a quick Floo to a shop near the village but still a five-minute walk to the churchyard itself.” Sirius has grown to like the cobbled combination of wizarding transport amid Muggles, threads splayed wide and gathered back together haphazardly across sprawls of city and countryside. He helps gather their dishes into an immaculate sink before assuming his coat and scarf in the front room and watching as Lyall steps into the hearth. He names a nondescript Welsh shop, a fatherly-sounding wizard’s name that he repeats in a flash of green flame and forgets the minute they arrive through the opposing Floo, and Sirius follows Lyall into the open as he brushes pale soot from his shoulders. He vaguely misses the bark of a mechanical dog star.

They emerge on a stoney walk, surrounded by long grass and birdsong in a pale grey sky. Lyall points to a quaint-looking old church a middle distance away, where Sirius can see the smallish shapes of people in black clustered in a tiny cemetery; his stomach pulls involuntarily.

“Hope’s nephew is parson there, it’s a lovely little space. They’ll be expecting us,” as Lyall starts a professorial lope down the way, his shined shoes crunching on the gravel like a boneyard of walnut shells.

They reach the church soon, Sirius watching it grow from a distant vignette to a tense reality through the short walk—Lyall didn’t strike up conversation as the stones and grass whispered on the borders of their passage, so he took the subliminal cue to remain quiet as well. When they cross into the churchyard, stepping through its squat Victorian gate of obstinate wrought iron, Sirius realizes with surprised relief that there isn’t a casket but a beautiful little silver urn atop a symbolic headstone. Death has always unnerved him, but he had forgotten to be worried about the possibility of an open casket. The ashes are calming in the face of his high-strung mortality.

The parson, clearly a cousin with the same near-auburn shock of hair so flyaway on Remus but slicked into priestly simplicity on this man, smiles wanly at the two of them arriving but says nothing by way of greeting. Lyall stops in front of a bear of a man in black working class weeds, his shoulders squared ever so slightly; _ah._ Uncle Rhys. Sirius keeps his hackles from raising by slowly digging a heel into the grass. Lyall murmurs something softly when he extends his hand to Rhys, who contemplates it for a second and instead pulls Lyall into a burly hug. The slight woman beside Rhys who had just released her spousal hold on Rhys’ arm, fair-haired and fawnish with a grey shawl pulled around her head, sends a small and motherly smile to Sirius. He returns it.

“Right,” the young parson says in a high, clear voice, and the part of Sirius’ mind stuck on comparisons to Remus muses adrift that this man could be attractive in a forbidden sort of way if he didn’t slouch so much. “Now that we’ve all arrived, we can begin.”

The rites move along, calm on the river of this bleak day with the breeze filling its sails like a sigh. There are readings from a small leathern bible—stories Sirius has never known but enjoys the sounds of. The parson speaks frankly of his late aunt then, surprisingly wise and trusting in the assurance of her assumption to a home more splendid than their own. “Thus our beloved Hope,” he says, not without light premeditated pride at his semantic wit that Sirius catches like a scent, “will always be with us, regardless of the time, place, or situation.”

He invites the rest of the gathering forward, and they move in turn to offer short words of memorial from their small circle of familiarity. Sirius hangs back with the instinct to sit and wait by the door for something that is not his to partake in to end. His heart still tugs with each memory brought flickering and alive like a pixie trail, all directed kindly at the urn perched on the headstone, and most of all when it ends on Lyall. As he steps forward Sirius suddenly sees in him a reflection of Remus, aged and reminiscent of a life well-lived, and he fights back the tears that spring up along his lashes at the wrenching loneliness the image dredges up.

Remus’ father offers up what must have been the summation of his solitary thoughts for the past two weeks— _My soulmate, a selfless mother, with a brilliance that outmatched any that ever walked beside her_ —and, as empathetic depth contracts in the hollows of Sirius’ chest and rattles a track of tears down his cheek, cannot finish for the tidy grief that touches him as well. Lyall moves back beside Sirius, the sympathetic eyes of the rest of their tiny congregation following him shyly, and Sirius grips his shoulder with stolid affection. Lyall pats his hand in thanks, and it ranks high among the kindest things that Sirius has ever felt.

The parson does an airy little blessing over the grave, and thus the ceremony closes itself with all the neatness of a small cupboard door. As the extended family begins to depart like dandelion spores, Lyall’s nephew hands him the urn and thanks him shortly for speaking.

“And thank you for attending as well…?” Sirius looks to his left and realizes he’s being addressed. He finishes swiping at his eyes, sniffling tersely and offers a cursory smile.

“Sirius,” he extends a hand, receives a fairly weak handshake. “I’m a friend of Remus’ from—from school age, helping his father in the interim here.”

The parson’s brow tightens ever so slightly at the mention of Remus, and Sirius feels a mental wall lock up in the back of his mind; _well then get stuffed, Brother Judge, he wouldn’t have liked your cookie-cutter sermon anyways, sorry he’s busy trying not to be a public menace,_ and for once Sirius agrees with the venomous dregs of his genetic code that swirl through his psyche in tones of anger and vitriol.

“Ta then, Lyall,” calls a gruff voice, coming from Rhys a few paces down the lane with a hand raised in farewell. Sirius watches Lyall wave his own goodbye, a quirk made of equal parts relief and short manners, as the parson moves off without another word and Sirius and Lyall are the only ones left at the headstone. The sun is beginning to set, sinking itself slowly behind a hill to the west, and Sirius’ skin prickles as he begins sending up a steady stream of pleas to the stars that Remus remains as safe as possible once the moon starts peeking through the trees. Lyall, looking weary as he clutches the urn, looks at the grave and sighs.

“She would appreciate the granite.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, absolutely. She always appreciated the overlooked, found prettiness in the plain. How else would she have married me, eh?”

Lyall smiles as Sirius laughs, a good-natured bark that heals some of the grey pain of the day. Sirius watches him kneel down, still holding the urn, and draws his wand over the grass at the base of the headstone. He conjures up a happy-looking cluster of field mushrooms, springy and pure white, and stands to admire his handiwork.

“They’ll last all seasons and grow back if they’re pulled,” he says, almost to himself, with a warm measure of pride. Sirius doesn’t ask, but the permanent fungus clearly pacifies Lyall with reminiscent happiness. He turns to Sirius, eyes shining and finally at peace behind his glasses. “Well, what say you to back home and a tall glass of brandy? I’ve got a bottle brewed by Spanish Veela that will burn all the way down to your heels.”

—

Sirius is back in a t-shirt and jeans, Remus’ suit hung back in its garment bag in the spare room he’s taken for the evening, and standing in front of the closet in Hope’s old room with a small-scale war running silently in his mind. He’s been loosened nicely by the brandy—really quite delicious, it tasted like the way Remus smiles into their kisses when he’s exceedingly proud of himself for saying something saucy or eliciting fluttering sounds from Sirius, so he had to settle on a simple _Perfect way to round off the day_ when Lyall asked what he thought—but an ounce of tension remains in his shoulders. He can’t bring himself to slide back the mirrored door and face what’s inside, and he stares down his reflection; his hair has begun to relax out of its braid. His eyes look tired. He wants to sleep until Remus arrives in the morning, but he has one job to do that should be easy by all accounts of not knowing Hope too terribly closely.

“Alright, Pads,” he whispers, taking the door handle to drag it open and closing his eyes. When he opens them again he is faced with a simplicity of several dresses hanging close together, a few pairs of shoes standing neatly in a row, and a well-used traveling trunk. Sirius blinks once, twice, pleasantly surprised and impressed at the lack of clutter or remaining clothes. He knows never to underestimate the efficiency of a Lupin, but he’s never had such concrete proof besides a spotless flat. He tries the lid of the trunk, and when it opens with a leathery creak his chest tightens. _Oh._ Here it is, then.

Sheafs of letters, a bottle of perfume, two pairs of embroidered gloves, and piles of other documents and booklets are stacked cozily on themselves within. Sirius thinks fleetingly that perhaps he should tell Lyall, but the man obviously knows this is here and has purposely tucked it away. He had gone to sleep twenty minutes ago, his room now what used to be his office for bringing work home from the Ministry, and Sirius has a feeling he knew sleep would be a sure way to avoid any dust kicked up that he didn’t want to face after laying it to rest.

Sirius pushes the closet door open the rest of its way and sits in front of the trunk, pulling it closer to him to examine the contents. He shifts them around steadily, almost afraid to draw the first of them out for closer inspection. He turns over a bundle of letters addressed to Lyall, and as he thumbs through the carefully-turn envelopes he realizes he’s holding a collection of early messages between Remus’ parents. He feels an unconscious blush rise in his cheeks and puts them to the side, feeling like an intruder for even holding such secret correspondence. Sirius turns back to the trunk, digging gently with renewed purpose, examining each little trinket briefly and deciding he’ll save them all for Remus—photographs of distant relatives, souvenirs from trips and holidays, he knows they all hold something small and meaningful. He wants to hoard this multitude of pure goodness like gold.

He soon reaches the bottom, where he finds a folder bulky with paper. Sirius pulls it out and a part of him instantly wishes he hadn’t, for involuntary tears brim in his eyes for the second time that day when he sees the endearingly clunky script of Remus’ name in the corner of a crayon drawing of a family of three. He stares at it, the u-shaped little smiles each family members sports so innocuous and _normal_ for the turmoil Sirius knows they went through during Remus’ childhood, and feels the tug of discovery and affection roiling in his guts. He swallows thickly and begins to turn through page after page of these saved memories, drawings and handmade cards for Muggle celebrations all imbued with the innocence of Remus’ early years. Birthday cards, little notes on napkins, all sorts of lovely preservations of a mother who knew her son was an especially brilliant creature no matter his circumstance. Sirius feels a deep-seeded fellowship with Hope’s spirit, in that he has saved every one of Remus’ letters since they started writing in earnest throughout time apart the the middle of third year. He nearly feels like an intruder, but the greater sprawl of his heart is propelling him through this secret time capsule and teaching him once and for all that Remus has learned to love best through sharing the written word.

He stops cold on one of the last faded pictures, and a muffled sob escapes him when he reads _thank you mum for taking care of me I LOVE YOU Remus 1966_ —wobbly handwriting titling a blocky illustration of a smiling woman holding bandage to a little boy with long teeth and a tail, with the full moon frowning through the window next to them. Oh Merlin, Sirius wants him here in this instance to hold and guard and apologize for every moon that could never be his fault but absolutely feels like it in this moment, the unique Black tendency to assume responsibility for anything important but now so warped by Sirius’ abandoned soul that he jumps to fix anything moderately broken—fine for cars, but so much loftier for the conditions of people he loves. This was far more than he bargained for out of the annals of Hope’s closet.

Sirius decides immediately that the trunk will come with him; Lyall has said he wants to donate the clothing and that the rest of the belongings were at Sirius’ discretion to take back to the flat. He knows these memories need to stay with Remus, and while it can’t be any time soon that Sirius will share them because of the wound of loss remaining raw for some time in Remus, this snapshot of life well lived needs to stay battened-down through the war zone that is Time Itself in the safety of Basingstoke.

Sirius wipes his eyes, repacking the trunk with deliberate gingerness and care. His blood is singing with resolve and purpose, and as he closes the lid and draws his wand to charm it down to pocket size he finds himself smiling tearfully at the fact that a woman of such astounding non-magical normalcy has managed to steer the heavy hand of his fate from far beyond the grave.

—

The silent gasp of dawn arrives without announcing itself, but Sirius feels it even through the depth of his dreamless sleep like a firebrand. He wakes with a start, breathing hard, and looks to the pale pre-morning light through the blinds as if he might see Remus sitting on the window sill. All is quiet; all is terribly fucking unnerving.

Sirius heaves himself out of bed and pulls on last night’s clothing, throwing his jacket over top and stumbling into his boots. He collects his scarf like an afterthought and steps lightly into the hallway, leaving through the front door and shutting it behind him as noiselessly as possible. The cold air burns—Sirius starts a slow trudge down the path to the side road and draws the last cigarette from the case in his breast pocket, lighting it with a brush of his fingers and huffing at the surprising amount of energy it takes. He finds a low stone wall that emerges from the sparse woods to the east and takes a seat. Thus begins his anxious wait for Remus’ return.

A fine fog like steam through a sieve sits over the grass in the sprawling expanse of the yard, the nearest house over a mere smudge on the horizon. Sirius remembers when Remus had told him and James and Pete about his family moving here, cautiously optimistic about its relative isolation and the presence of a large and sturdy basement; Sirius’ heart had lurched then at the idea of him transforming without them. He takes a long drag on his cigarette and blows lazy rings into the damp air like his used to when he was 14.

The waiting has always worn thin on him, this tense and unavoidable eye of the storm that feels like wet robes clinging to his arms, whenever he tries to be patient before Remus wakes up or arrives back through their door as quiet and unassuming as a ghost. Sirius thinks now that it’s the only sour note left in his life anymore; his family is gone and only stings occasionally like a phantom limb, his self-made brotherhood with James is strong and he’s grown to love Lily as a sister, Pete is doing fine as far as he knows, Sirius has work that leaves him smudged and sweating and satisfied, and he’s sure he’s finally found that elusive existential purpose everyone is always prattling on about in making sure Remus is always as close to Ecstatically Fucking Happy as possible. The concept soothes him in many ways but still digs in others, because he knows that no matter what he does he can never cure the curse. He can only help Remus live through it—Sirius decided long ago that living with Remus and picking up fractured pieces every four weeks was still paradise compared to not having him near at all.

For ten minutes longer Sirius sits in chilled solitude, turning reality over and over in his mind like an hourglass. Then suddenly the pop of Apparition sounds, dull and morning-mute and a ways to his left in the woods, so he crushes the tail of his cigarette into the stones beneath him hurriedly and tears over the wet pine needles and leaves carpeting the ground like a dog after a hare. Sirius stumbles through low branches and shrubs until he skids to a stop in a small clearing and sees Remus learning against a tree, wincing on the opposite end of the tamped earth. He has a split lip and a slapdash sling cradling his right arm, and Sirius’ heart stutters. He makes to say his name, as if it could mend something somehow, but Remus sees him first and smiles weakly. “Morning…it was a bit of a rough one.”

Sirius vaults over a fall of moldering branches and embraces him, gently for the bummed arm but with ardor that flexes every tendon in his fingers with its immediacy. Remus responds in kind with one-armed assurance. They stand, inwardly and rapidly cataloguing one another as they catch their breath together.

“It was only dislocated, I think he rammed me into the wall,” Remus says into the collar of Sirius’ coat.

“That’s what, four, five hours ’til it heals?”

“I’d say six. The shackles broke, there were gouges in the wall and a lot of matted fur hanging about.” Sirius swallows a helpless groan of panic and flexes his hands into Remus’ jacket. “Didn’t need any stitches though, nothing too terrible on the surface. I think the Wolfsbane is helping.”

“Fuck that,” Sirius says low and fervent, “next month, we run. We go up north and just let him chase Padfoot until we’re both fucking knackered so he doesn't _ever_ tear you up again, yeah?”

A light sigh from Remus, “Okay. We could do that.”

They step apart and Sirius kisses him with aching sweetness, holding him gently but pressing the indomitable gravity of his relief into Remus’ mouth. He receives a light sound of contentment against it, mellifluous and lovely and So Very Remus that it lifts some of the worry out of Sirius like cooling ore. They part again, slightly renewed.

“Breakfast,” Sirius states, “good strong tea, and eggs and sausage.”

“Stop, don’t arouse me before I have to sit down with my father,” Remus retorts immediately, and Sirius has to smile through all the soppy guff he’s been preoccupied with and appreciate, as he has countless times before, the undefinable strength with which Remus is able to handle himself every morning after hell on earth. They walk back to the house with Sirius’ arm thrown, protective and warm, around Remus’ good shoulder.

“Da?” Remus calls once he stoops into the entryway, shedding his coat awkwardly as Sirius scrambles to help him with the sling. Lyall’s footsteps sound quickly through the small side hallway and meet them in the front room, where he gaze flickers across Remus’ disrepair with carefully-guarded alarm. He seems to flounder for a moment before he settles for gripping Remus tenderly at the nape of his neck.

“You got a wallop then, did you?”

“It’s been worse,” Remus says with a smile, and its placidity falters when he sees past Lyall to the mantle where his mother’s urn sits comfortably. Sirius sees Lyall catch the shift as well, and they say nothing in a modest silence for moment.

“I wish I could have been here. I’m sorry, da,” Remus whispers.

Lyall relaxes, nodding as he turns back towards the kitchen with fatherly surety. “What you need before anything else is a full meal, and then we can talk about the grit of it all.” He looks over his shoulder for the pair to follow; “Eggs, sausage, toast as well?”

They trail after Lyall, and Sirius feels antsy with the impulse to feel as though he must guard Remus from the memories of loss. As if Remus could hear his thoughts, he glances over his shoulder with a calm and nearly unreadable look to Sirius that holds in its depths a poorly-translated _Thank you_ coiled up amid several relics of boyish unease. Sirius resists the urge to kiss him again and settles for nodding with feigned confidence.

The three men fill the little kitchen table with their collective long legs and layers of shirts against the briskness of morning, where Sirius assumes the role of Remus’ right arm in passing him the sugar and butter and several slices of toast to go with the fry up cooling in front of him. Remus eats in schooled silence while Sirius sees the relief melt into his shoulders and a layer of color return to his face within minutes.

“Was yesterday a nice ceremony?” he soon asks awkwardly around a wide mouthful that somehow still manages to sound courteous. Lyall nods with a slight shrug.

“Your cousin made fine work of it, some of your mum’s favorite passages from the book and a tidy turnout of family. It was good. Rhys says hello, and sends a ‘sorry’ for something I’m not sure I want detailed.”

Remus snorts wryly to himself, shaking his head as he swallows. “I’m glad it was pleasant. Mum’s still making sure everything runs smoothly from the Great Wide Yonder then, she always said it herself.”

“That she is,” through Lyall’s low chuckle, and he and Remus share a meaningful and edifying look across the table. Sirius recognizes it as the paternal version of Remus’ You Know That Was Witty, Admit It, You Adore Me look.

They finish breakfast steadily, most it going towards sating the voracity caused by Remus’ regenerating body, with intermittent conversation of the general state of things for the Lupin men and short side streets into inquires of Sirius’ goings-on. Soon, Lyall is the first to stand with his empty teacup.

“Well,” he announces through a stiffened stretch of his shoulders, “Sirius, my lad, it’s been a harrowing few days but you’ve certainly made it easier. I don’t think I have words for what it’s meant in support.”

Sirius hurriedly swallows a crust of toast and stands up himself, extending his hand to take Lyall’s own in a firm grip. He admires the strength he finds there and feels his pride bloom affably. “I’d do it over in a heartbeat, sir. Although I would hope any future help comes with happier causes.”

“Absolutely,” Lyall says, with a warm smile alongside that makes Sirius feel invincible. “I really can’t thank you enough. I’ll have to be heading to London, but do let me know if you need anything in the future, will you? Especially with the flat,” the last bit directed also at Remus, who waves a hand.

“I check for boggarts every three months, no worries there, da.”

“Yes worries, make it two months or you run the risk of another one getting in under your nose, aye?”

Remus smiles at some remembered memory the two of them share and accepts a short kiss on his forehead from Lyall.

“Be well, son. Be safe. Write me at central post, even if Euripides resists and nips at you.”

“Love, da. I will.” Lyall gives Sirius one last parting smile and nod, and several footsteps later the door rattles shut with a pleasant thunk. Sirius looks up with a flutter in his stomach when Remus’ knee rests sideways against his own.

“He respects you like you wouldn’t believe, have I ever told you?” Remus says gently. “He knows a lot about the Black lineage, so he understands what it’s cost you to get where you are now. He was impressed when you moved to a mostly-Muggle town, notwithstanding how wonderful you’ve been with all the lycanthropy nonsense.”

“’S not nonsense.”—nudging Remus’ thigh good-naturedly—“And one of the greatest Defense wizards in Britain respects _me?_ ” Sirius says, and it’s just the right inflection to make Remus smile. “You watch out then, Moony, I’ll charm half the country when you’re not looking.”

“Yes, but I’m always looking,” a murmur so vulnerable that Sirius feels his mind short out and all he can do is gather Remus’ sling-bound hand in his own and hold the warmth like a beacon. Sirius wants to ask if Lyall knows the true extent of his closeness to Remus, something enigmatic flitting around in the spaces between We’re Just Flatmates and yet so full of higher meaning that it makes Sirius want to weep sometimes, but he knows the lack of anything concrete to call it has made that impossible. Remus Lupin is the last person on the planet who would hash out the details of carnal relationships with his parents, least of all his father. Sirius feels frustrated and culpable; he meets Remus’ eyes without really meaning to.

“Remus, I love you, you know,” he feels himself saying, and there it is. The product of weeks of agony and walking on eggshells, distilled to phrase so colloquial it will make his ears burn to remember this moment in the future. Now though, in the heart of the present beating deep with crimson nowness, it feels like the only avenue of choice. Remus is beside him, and Remus is holding his hand, and Remus has come back from another hellish moon and must be told how much he matters before he disappears someday.

But Remus is also silent, his face caught in handsome bewilderment in the middle of a sip of tea. Sirius suddenly remembers that he should be mortified—dread begins its smug trickle into his veins and fights a tarantella with adrenaline. _Shitshitshitshitshit…_

Remus takes a breath of pause, sets the cup down neatly, and trains his gaze back on Sirius. They say nothing for several beats, through which Sirius bears embarrassment like Sisyphus. Of course he’s the first one to break the silence. “If you need me to find another place to live now that I’ve cocked this up, I’ll start looking tomorrow,” he mutters in a small voice.

Sirius is jolted out of his discomfort by Remus suddenly breaking into laughter, a prolepsis of happiness he hadn’t expected to feel in this quiet house after such a solemn passage of days. Intrinsic confusion worries at his nerves and he unconsciously tightens his hold on Remus’ hand. Sirius is unsure whether Remus is laughing at him or the situation, and neither feels very assuring.

“I’m sorry,” Remus says as the edges of mirth ebb off around his words, laying a hand atop Sirius’, “you haven’t cocked anything up, I—how could you think I would want you to move?” His smile is still sitting comfortably in his eyes when Sirius tips his face up from downturned shame. “Christ alive, Sirius, are you blind?”—gentle, joking admonishment that feels like Mallorcan brandy on Sirius’ nerves. Remus laces the fingers of their hands together and leans over to kiss Sirius simple at the curve of his jaw.

“I do know,” he whispers there, igniting Sirius’ adoration and near-beatific joy like a spell flare, “I’ve been trying to figure out whether I should tell you just as much for _years._ ”

The chord of hope and arrival that rattles Sirius’ core is almost enough to strike him immobile, to keep him from gathering Remus in a clinging embrace made strong through a lifetime of thankless love given to others but barely any returned ever as deeply—almost.

—

A month later, Sirius smells the ache in his tendons before he feels it. The light whines in through the window across his eyelids in high, long tones, and he lets his eyes peek open to taste the lance of morning through his pupils. The synesthetic afterburn of becoming man again after long hours as Padfoot hasn’t been this heavy in a long time, but then again he hasn’t been able to follow Remus on a full moon in a long, _long_ time. He vaguely remembers Apparating home with Remus, half-conscious and leaning on him heavily, at dawn, blearily trying to be almost worried about one of them getting splinched. But they were fine. Alive. Exhausted. Slept.

Sirius turns on his arm to see Remus beside him still knocked out by the night. No broken bones, no wrenched joints, just the moderate scratches of underbrush along his limbs and the refuse of wintry woods in his hair that he knows they’ll wash out together in a matter of hours. Through his own half-awake torpor, Sirius feels whole. _This_ is how he’s meant to help, by running the beast ragged for hours so Remus can exist beside him without a new scar each month. _This_ is the most natural way in which he knows how to love. Living in the shared reality of understanding for the past four weeks has been nothing short of holy.

 _If I had known how beautiful all this giddiness has made you, I would have laced up and said something ages ago,_ Remus had sallied in the solitude of a dim alley in Brighton at the last new moon. Sirius kissed him fiercely then, not quite with full abandon but with an ounce less reserve that he would have in the past. They had finally, clumsily, plunged fully into love—it feels good to remind himself often. Talking had become easier, laughter had become a mainstay, and gone was the postured dance of give and take in lieu now of a close and improvised collection of lovely little steps he and Remus had begun to take together. So despite the mounting whispers of war that threaten the rind of his mind and make so many of his friends nervous and angry, Sirius is alive.

“Are you just going to look at me like a Big Fucking Queer, or will you go make tea?”

Remus’ voice is rocky with fatigue, but the pain of repair is gloriously absent. He stretches languidly, his small closed-eyes smile knowing for the way the shifting of his bare, sinuous muscles stirs every fiber of Sirius’ want; he has recently become extremely good at teasing in all the right ways. Sirius catches him around the waist, leans over him and buries his face in the earthy auburn of Remus’ neck.

“Every time I make the tea there’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?” he mutters, pressing a deep kiss to blood-warm skin and suddenly springing from the bed with garnered vigor. Remus moans in heated protest and Sirius laughs. “You know it’s true!”

“It’s true, it’s bloody true,” Remus grumbles as Sirius puts on his dressing gown and yawns widely. He stops himself, feels a strange weight in the pocket and thinks for a moment before his memory prods him firmly. The charmed trunk he kept from Lyall’s home last month had assumed this pocket as its safe place for the last four weeks, Sirius never quite knowing when was the right moment to give it to Remus. He looks over his shoulder at the gorgeous anomaly now in a graceful and sleepy sit at the edge of their mattress, and it seems that Mornings After of all sorts have now become Sirius Black’s favored window of time for stupidly romantic decisions.

“Love,” in low softness, and Remus looks over to him like summer sunlight through treetops. Sirius feels his spirit gather wind in its leaves, _Yes indeed_ —very little at all between them and yet absolutely everything they mean to one another has changed now—“I think this belongs to you.”

_-fin-_


End file.
